U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Consumer Price Index

How BLS Measures Price Change for Elementary and High School Tuition and Fees in the Consumer Price Index

Elementary and high school tuition and fixed fees, a component of the
tuition and other school fees
index, is included in the education and
communication group of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Both the
tuition and other school fees index and the elementary
and high school tuition and fixed fees index are
published monthly at the U.S. level. The education and
communication index is published in all publication areas on
each area's publication cycle.

The tuition and other school fees index includes the
four components shown below with the relative
importance of each index. These data are for the U.S. city average
of the CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) as of
December 2009.

Item

Relative Importance

Tuition, other school fees, and childcare

2.835

College tuition and fees

1.493

Elementary and high school tuition and fees

.412

Child care and nursery school

.790

Technical and business school tuition and fees

.042

Elementary and high school tuition and fixed fees
(hereafter referred to as E-HS tuition), accounts for about
15 percent of the weight of the tuition and other school
fees index. This is the third largest component of the index.

The base period weight for each CPI item group is
the out-of-pocket expenditures that households had
incurred for that item in 2007-08. The weight for E-HS
tuition reflects annual consumer expenditures for studies
at elementary schools and high schools (grades
K-12) where tuition or fixed fees or both are charged. The
CPI sample of elementary and high schools that were
priced was selected proportional to expenditures for students
as reported by households residing in the 87 areas
sampled by the CPI. In most cases, the schools that were
priced were in close proximity to the 87 sampling
areas. However, some students may choose to attend elementary or high
schools that are outside of the 87 pricing
areas and they are also included in the sample (which is
unlike the samples for most other CPI items).

Student tuition, whether paid on a yearly or monthly
basis, as well as necessary fixed fees (such as
registration fees, athletic fees, activity fees, etc.) are eligible for
pricing. As a general rule, most private schools are
eligible for pricing in the E-HS tuition index because they
charge tuition or fixed fees or both.

These private schools may be religious or sectarian
in nature. Most of those priced in the index are
affiliated with a specific religious group (Catholic, Jewish,
Baptist, etc.). The overwhelming majority of public schools
are not eligible for pricing because they do not charge
students specific tuition or fixed fees.

In many cases, families send all of their children to
the same school. To accommodate this, multiple students
of the same family are eligible for pricing in this index.
Charges for room and board, textbooks, lunch and
uniform rental are covered elsewhere in the CPI sample.

Institutions being priced for the E-HS tuition index
are eligible to be priced on a monthly basis. However,
almost all elementary and high schools make any adjustments
to their tuition and fixed fees before the start of each
new academic year. To reduce the burden on the schools'
respondents, as well as the cost of the CPI program,
the pricing frequency is reduced. Most institutions are
required to be priced 2 months per year. The first selected
pricing month is normally the month where price changes
are most likely to occur. The second selected pricing
month is 2 months after the first pricing month, and is
normally used to check the accuracy of the data already collected. For nonpricing months, the last collected price for
each quote is carried forward for use in the current index.

Tuition and fixed fee changes for academic terms are
eligible for collection once the new prices have been
set and are payable to the school. Therefore, most of
the changes for the E-HS tuition index are captured in
the late summer or early fall of each year. Because much
of the year's change is captured in one season, the CPI
also publishes a seasonally adjusted E-HS tuition index.
Seasonal adjustment attempts to take index changes that
are clustered into a small portion of the year, and spread
them over the course of the full year, thereby facilitating
the analysis of the underlying trend.

Selection of characteristics to be priced

When CPI field staff seek prices for E-HS tuition,
they first use probability sampling techniques to determine
if one student or multiple students in a family are
being priced. The field staff then use probability sampling
to determine grade levels for the students, and to
specify whether the selected students are or are not members
of the group that the school is affiliated with. Next,
school policy is checked to see how many hours per day the
students attend class, how many days per week classes
are attended, and the length of the academic year. In
some cases, the field staff may select from different
discounts (such as early payment discount) that the priced
students may be eligible for. Once these data have been
selected, the many characteristics associated with the students
are identified to ensure that the same students are priced
each collection period, or should the situation change, that
the change can be readily identified. The following is an
example of characteristic information that would be
identified:

Number of studentssingle student

Membershipgroup member

Grade level7

Number of hours per day6

Number of days per week5

Length of academic year9 months

Student discountsnone

Method of tuition chargeper year

Fixed feeregistration

Fixed feeathletic

Fixed feeactivity

Issues associated with E-HS tuition

One of the most difficult problems for the CPI is to
quantify changes accurately in the quality of an item and
to factor these quality changes out of the item's price
movements. It an item's characteristics change, a quality
improvement or deterioration may have occurred. In
some cases, the information supplied by the respondent may
be adequate to explain the change but it may not be
enough to justify quality adjustment. For example, if a
school states only that their length of day has increased by
30 minutes, it could be deemed a quality improvement if
the extra time is devoted to additional instruction, but it
would not be deemed a quality improvement if the extra time
is added to lunch or recess. In this case, further
information dealing with the change would need to be
supplied before any quality adjustments could be made.

Because quality change often accompanies price
change when the price of an item changes significantly, BLS
field staff will ask the respondent to identify a cause. For
E-HS tuition, many price changes from respondents are not
accompanied by resulting causes. When no causes
accompany tuition change and the characteristics for
the identified items remain unchanged, the price changes
are reflected in the E-HS tuition index.

Additional information
Additional information on the Consumer Price Index
can be found in the BLSHandbook of Methods,
chapter 17, "The Consumer Price Index," Bulletin 2490 (1997).
This chapter is also available on the BLS Internet site
(http://www.bls.gov) under the topic "Publications," or you
may call the Information and Analysis Section of the CPI
at (202) 691-7000.